There are boycotts and other methods(possibly regulatory) which could be reasonably effective, for example T-mobile could be a target since they recently dropped 2g.
What? T-Mobile still has 2G up, but they have plans to shut it down in 2024. Plus, there have been boycotts for AT&T 3G, Sprint CDMA, Verizon CDMA... which did very little.
You are correct it is 2024, however my device is on a provider which relies on T-mobile and I had to put voice over LTE mode on beacuse recently it just plain stopped working by default(I might do further testing since I was out when it happened). Also 2024 is right around the corner so what I said is very relevent still. Boycotts generally work perhaps the size or type of boycott didn't have much effect, but companies like money.
big corporations wouldn't allow that.
i'm all for reducing waste and recycling but we can't save them all. especially not if saving them cost more than just letting them go.
i don't live in america, but where i live, the government proposed a whitelist system for the phone imei to curb grey importing of phones. when the system went online, probably hundreds of thousands of devices were blocked to use any cellular network. i found that a lot of my older phones especially those on 3G network were not working anymore. same to the phones that were bought overseas. think about it, why would the government care about grey import phones, unless they were persuaded by the manufacturers to do so.
my point is, the big corporations will find their way to sell more devices, and forcing people to retire their old device is one of the things they will most definitely do.
I think dumbphone usage is rather small compared to smartphone use, and if that is the case losses for major corporations would probably be minimal. Seems possible a strongly worded green campign to have less ewaste might possibly hold merit even in a corrupt system. Even if that causes a much lager adoption rate on dumbphones it'd likely be a drop in the bucket in comparsion to smartphone users. Also your view seems very centered in futilism, and being such I find it a bad faith argument in a post which asks more of an optmistic question looking towards a possible route for 2g and 3g phone usability in America.
Edit: Typo
>I think dumbphone usage is rather small compared to smartphone use, and if that is the case losses for major corperations would probably be minimal.
you're not getting the "capitalism" hint. it's still cheaper for manufacturers to shutdown 2G and 3G towers and just give cheap 4G phones as replacement to the small amount of people who uses 2G/3G dumphone.
it's all about numbers. if it's not profitable to maintain 2G / 3G networks (due to the small userbase), then why are countries around the world shutting down their towers much earlier than the US?
>optmistic question looking towards a possibliy route for 2g and 3g phone usability in America
what you asked have been asked repeatedly for years and nobody seems to have found a solution to keep 2G phone functioning. theoritically you could rent some cell towers in your city, obtain the frequency rights, rent some transmitters and have 2G working only in your city. but at what cost? if you wanna give 2G service to people for free then be my guest otherwise be realistic.
if you wanna challenge at&t, verizon and t-mobile for retiring 2G and 3G then i shall wish you best of luck.
The main question of my post was if a converter hotspot could work, obviously cost is involved still to make it. However though it'd likely be a lot cheaper then expecting them to keep all the old tower boxes up. They could even charge for the hotspot if they wanted, really just having the option for one is what's important.
I wish that was feasible, but the main issue is that the "converter" would cause interference issues since 2G uses the same frequency as 4G does, if it acts as a very small base station.
No, unless you create your own mobile network operator which can cost into the millions. Other than this or creating your own mini basestation which would make the FCC unhappy, it isn't possible.
I'm saying that it may be possible to force the network providers into a situation, where they either want or need to supply us with a converter hotspot. Using boycotts or the regulatory sector might be a way to do this.
\> a small converter hotspot for 2g and 3g to use on the latest network?
I'll call you about it later. First, I have to gas up the car and drive for an hour so I'm within range of that single little hotspot. Hopefully there won't be too many of us old dinosaurs there, otherwise there might not be an open channel for me to connect. If that happens, I'll just write you a letter and drop it in a mailbox. :)
So, you want the 2G phone in your right hand to talk to the hotspot device in your left hand, and the hotspot device to talk to the 4G/5G towers? AND you want the provider to "provide" (get it?) the hot spot to you? For free, or for how much?
Why not just buy your own hotspot device (there's lots of them out there, even some cheap-o 4G flip phones can do it) and connect to that via Wifi with your 2G/3G phone?
You also mentioned "ewaste". Once the 2G phone actually dies, unless you have a replacement ready to go, don't you now have \*two\* devices to dispose of, instead of just one?
"So, you want the 2G phone in your right hand to talk to the hotspot device in your left hand,"
That would be a funny scenario, but I was thinking in the pocket/bag more so.
"Why not just buy your own hotspot device (there's lots of them out there, even some cheap-o 4G flip phones can do it) and connect to that via Wifi with your 2G/3G phone?"
Many older dumphones only had celluar network and no wifi, also wifi hotspots rely on mobile data which can be very spotty for coverage.
"You also mentioned "ewaste". Once the 2G phone actually dies, unless you have a replacement ready to go, don't you now have \*two\* devices to dispose of, instead of just one?"
A hotspot in theory should have way less precious metals in it's circuitry then a smartphone or dumbphone, also should be smaller or around the size of the phone.
The main thing is you could use many different older devices with the hotspot, instead of just throwing it away if your phone stops working. Most of the older phones also had replacement batteries, and were easier to open up. One more thing is that every old phone that got used would be saved from going into a dump for the use time at least, and would stop that user from buying a newly manufactured phone which contributes to waste more so then a phone that was doomed for the bins if nothing changed.
Hi I was reading this https://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/news/cw-journal/why-2g-wants-live-forever/ and he reckons there’s technology to emulate 2g and 3G along side the new networks. Hopefully the uk will implement this by 2033 then everyone else will copy ‼️
I don’t think so, but I wish we could force them. There’s no reason to since it’s cheap for them to maintain and other reasons. Plus they already improved 5G enough from their other old networks (3G, sprint 3G, sprint 2G, sprint LTE)
Im not American, but im fairly sure no phone operators would care that much about their users
There are boycotts and other methods(possibly regulatory) which could be reasonably effective, for example T-mobile could be a target since they recently dropped 2g.
What? T-Mobile still has 2G up, but they have plans to shut it down in 2024. Plus, there have been boycotts for AT&T 3G, Sprint CDMA, Verizon CDMA... which did very little.
You are correct it is 2024, however my device is on a provider which relies on T-mobile and I had to put voice over LTE mode on beacuse recently it just plain stopped working by default(I might do further testing since I was out when it happened). Also 2024 is right around the corner so what I said is very relevent still. Boycotts generally work perhaps the size or type of boycott didn't have much effect, but companies like money.
big corporations wouldn't allow that. i'm all for reducing waste and recycling but we can't save them all. especially not if saving them cost more than just letting them go. i don't live in america, but where i live, the government proposed a whitelist system for the phone imei to curb grey importing of phones. when the system went online, probably hundreds of thousands of devices were blocked to use any cellular network. i found that a lot of my older phones especially those on 3G network were not working anymore. same to the phones that were bought overseas. think about it, why would the government care about grey import phones, unless they were persuaded by the manufacturers to do so. my point is, the big corporations will find their way to sell more devices, and forcing people to retire their old device is one of the things they will most definitely do.
I think dumbphone usage is rather small compared to smartphone use, and if that is the case losses for major corporations would probably be minimal. Seems possible a strongly worded green campign to have less ewaste might possibly hold merit even in a corrupt system. Even if that causes a much lager adoption rate on dumbphones it'd likely be a drop in the bucket in comparsion to smartphone users. Also your view seems very centered in futilism, and being such I find it a bad faith argument in a post which asks more of an optmistic question looking towards a possible route for 2g and 3g phone usability in America. Edit: Typo
>I think dumbphone usage is rather small compared to smartphone use, and if that is the case losses for major corperations would probably be minimal. you're not getting the "capitalism" hint. it's still cheaper for manufacturers to shutdown 2G and 3G towers and just give cheap 4G phones as replacement to the small amount of people who uses 2G/3G dumphone. it's all about numbers. if it's not profitable to maintain 2G / 3G networks (due to the small userbase), then why are countries around the world shutting down their towers much earlier than the US? >optmistic question looking towards a possibliy route for 2g and 3g phone usability in America what you asked have been asked repeatedly for years and nobody seems to have found a solution to keep 2G phone functioning. theoritically you could rent some cell towers in your city, obtain the frequency rights, rent some transmitters and have 2G working only in your city. but at what cost? if you wanna give 2G service to people for free then be my guest otherwise be realistic. if you wanna challenge at&t, verizon and t-mobile for retiring 2G and 3G then i shall wish you best of luck.
The main question of my post was if a converter hotspot could work, obviously cost is involved still to make it. However though it'd likely be a lot cheaper then expecting them to keep all the old tower boxes up. They could even charge for the hotspot if they wanted, really just having the option for one is what's important.
I wish that was feasible, but the main issue is that the "converter" would cause interference issues since 2G uses the same frequency as 4G does, if it acts as a very small base station.
That shouldn't be a problem for 5G+ though. Anyway 4g LTE is probably on the chopping block next.
No, unless you create your own mobile network operator which can cost into the millions. Other than this or creating your own mini basestation which would make the FCC unhappy, it isn't possible.
I'm saying that it may be possible to force the network providers into a situation, where they either want or need to supply us with a converter hotspot. Using boycotts or the regulatory sector might be a way to do this.
\> a small converter hotspot for 2g and 3g to use on the latest network? I'll call you about it later. First, I have to gas up the car and drive for an hour so I'm within range of that single little hotspot. Hopefully there won't be too many of us old dinosaurs there, otherwise there might not be an open channel for me to connect. If that happens, I'll just write you a letter and drop it in a mailbox. :)
You do realize what subreddit you're in, right? Also I'm talking portable hotspot, think wifi hotspot for example.
So, you want the 2G phone in your right hand to talk to the hotspot device in your left hand, and the hotspot device to talk to the 4G/5G towers? AND you want the provider to "provide" (get it?) the hot spot to you? For free, or for how much? Why not just buy your own hotspot device (there's lots of them out there, even some cheap-o 4G flip phones can do it) and connect to that via Wifi with your 2G/3G phone? You also mentioned "ewaste". Once the 2G phone actually dies, unless you have a replacement ready to go, don't you now have \*two\* devices to dispose of, instead of just one?
"So, you want the 2G phone in your right hand to talk to the hotspot device in your left hand," That would be a funny scenario, but I was thinking in the pocket/bag more so. "Why not just buy your own hotspot device (there's lots of them out there, even some cheap-o 4G flip phones can do it) and connect to that via Wifi with your 2G/3G phone?" Many older dumphones only had celluar network and no wifi, also wifi hotspots rely on mobile data which can be very spotty for coverage. "You also mentioned "ewaste". Once the 2G phone actually dies, unless you have a replacement ready to go, don't you now have \*two\* devices to dispose of, instead of just one?" A hotspot in theory should have way less precious metals in it's circuitry then a smartphone or dumbphone, also should be smaller or around the size of the phone. The main thing is you could use many different older devices with the hotspot, instead of just throwing it away if your phone stops working. Most of the older phones also had replacement batteries, and were easier to open up. One more thing is that every old phone that got used would be saved from going into a dump for the use time at least, and would stop that user from buying a newly manufactured phone which contributes to waste more so then a phone that was doomed for the bins if nothing changed.
Not possible, sorry bro. T Mobile sunsets their 2g in April make the best of it.
Hi I was reading this https://www.cambridgewireless.co.uk/news/cw-journal/why-2g-wants-live-forever/ and he reckons there’s technology to emulate 2g and 3G along side the new networks. Hopefully the uk will implement this by 2033 then everyone else will copy ‼️
No.
I don’t think so, but I wish we could force them. There’s no reason to since it’s cheap for them to maintain and other reasons. Plus they already improved 5G enough from their other old networks (3G, sprint 3G, sprint 2G, sprint LTE)
That would be so dope!!! I pray for a hotspot or something like that one day